In today's e-mail

Mental health: Dandy.
Dental health: Still flossing regularly.
Fiscal health: Lovely day, isn't it?

I don't know about you but every time I open my e-mail it gives me the warm and fuzzies, reminding me that there's an awful lot of friendly people Out There, many of whom I've never even met: kindly folks like Pertinents F. Emulating, who wrote to me today about an exciting Investment Strategy! [his emphasis]. I couldn't believe my luck. But that wasn't all.

I also got a message from Brandie Ramirez (fqhmhknaffjw@ayaxiyaxxuuuhouse.com) -- how on earth does she pronounce let alone spell that, I wonder? Anyway, she sent me a Very important message that I must to read. And it was, honestly, another incredible, too-good-to-be-true offer. Oh, alright, I wasn't going to share it with anyone, but since any reader of Harrowing! is either a friend or family member, here's what she told me:

The great predictions are drawn up. The increase is up to 70% recently. (MXXR) is the lucrative deal and those who knows it is making money. The drilling achivements of this highly capable oil company exceeded all its expectations. One time this fact hits the street there will be no stopping this one. Right now it's around 0.022 but we are expecting it to triple. Once the information is made and the PR gets into full brandish. Don't hesitate and miss out. We recommend you to buy today. The key is getting in early and you have little time. We are told that Monday is the day this one will expode. Take your place before that happens.

Oh, sure, take a cheap shot. Dump on the woman for her bad spelling and grammar. But, hey, she's a total stranger, doing me a solid -- passing on some potentially priceless information that I bet no one else has. I could get rich with this info, but the poor girl didn't even ask to be cut in for a share of my imminent wealth. That's what I call selfless! And anyway, English probably isn't the girl's first name; I'm thinking the surname Ramirez is Mexican or something. Brandie's probably just an anglicization of Fqhmhknaffjw, however you pronounce it.

I haven't bought in yet, but that's only because I just got home after a long day at school. I'm going to take care of it as soon as I finish this post -- I want to pay off my student loans real quick, so I'm definitely going to take a shot at some of those stocks ASAP. Oh, and I've also got to e-mail my credit card information to someone else so I can get the penis enlargement cream. It's guaranteed to work -- my new best friend Moxie G. Rhinoplasty (topwtpstyledk@wtpstlfmnizzy.com) said so.

* * *

Okay, I hope you all realize that I was being SARCASTIC just now. Save your money and your time, don't call or write to warn me that I should never, ever send my credit card details to someone I don't know, especially not in an e-mail, blah blah blah. I know already. That was a joke. (Although I guess if you have to explain it, it's just not that funny...)

But sometimes I wonder. For some weird reason people actually take the things I write here seriously, which is more than I can say for the way they usually deal with me in person, but that's a story best left for another day. What's even weirder is that the only people who read this are people who really ought to know that I am possessed of a rather, um, unique and possibly warped sense of humour.

I hope I'm not overestimating my friends & family. Just the other day I got an earnest e-mail from someone who shall remain nameless, and who should know better, correcting (in rather elaborate, nay obsessive, detail) my assessment of the Democrats' failings. As if my use of the phrase "pounded it up their collective arse with a wooden mallet" in the original post was some sort of invitation to serious and reasoned political debate.

Go figure.

Anyway, back to the e-mail. As lame, goofy and/or utterly transparent as most spam is, I have to admit that I occasionally derive a perverse joy out of reading it. Some messages -- like the ones that insert random text scraped off web pages, cobbled together to fool spam filters -- are practically poetic. Then again, maybe I wouldn't be so easily amused if I had a TV.

Which brings me to this next piece of insanity, by way of snail-mail:

I received a form letter today from the TV Licensing Bureau. Now, some of you probably already know that in the U.K. you have to pay an annual license fee to own and watch TV; this money goes to a worthy cause, i.e., to help maintain the BBC which produces some great programming but generally receives no advertising revenue. So anyway, the letter is one of those friendly-with-a-vaguely-threatening-undercurrent kind of things, addressed to "The Present Occupier" of Flat L. It starts off by saying that according to their database (?!?) this flat is not licensed. Which is true, because I don't own a TV. (Incidentally I haven't watched TV since September 3. Anywhere, for any length of time. Unless you count the in-flight movie, but that's not really TV.)

So I'm just about to simply toss the letter into the bin when I notice it says I have to call to "stop any further investigation" (??!!???). I skim down towards the bottom where it says, and I quote:

Do you need a TV license?
If you watch or record programmes as they're being shown on TV, you are required by law to have a TV licence which costs 131.50GBP for colour or 44GBP for black and white. Equipment which you need to a licence to use includes:

• Television - colour or black and white
• Video or DVD recorder
• Mobile phone
• Set-top box
• Computer

Mobile phone? WTF?!?!?! Computer, I can almost understand. (Except here in the Harrow halls of residence, where Digital Village [the hall ISP]'s notion of "high speed broadband" is loading a single page of plain text, nographics, in a breathtaking 12 minutes. I get more timeouts per minute of surfing than an entire NBA championship game.) My mobile, the cheapest set available -- basically a disposable Nokia model, no kidding, they practically threw it at me as I was leaving the shop, crying, "Here, please, take it, we just want your tariff!" -- couldn't display a picture if you nailed one to the faceplate.

I don't mind supporting the BBC. They've produced some good shit over the years. But, c'mon, I'm a full-time studen, and a broke one at thatt. I don't have time to watch television, even if I had one. The only thing that moves on my computer are the dust bunnies.

I guess if god hadn't wanted mind-numbing bureaucracy, she wouldn't have given us England.